D'une aile d'ange - Laurent Coulomb

D'une aile d'ange - Laurent Coulomb

Melody on a poem by Étienne Orsini

Étienne Orsini's poem is taken from a collection born out of the grief the poet experienced after the death of his son. In the poet's own words, this short text expresses "both the desire for an impossible presence/absence, the fragility of existence and the power of reverie. With a gentle sense of drifting/floating, it leads us towards a beyond-of life, or perhaps merely of the day." The ambiguity of the poem, an expression of mourning aspiring to an indefinite elsewhere (of joy or of nothingness?), gives it all its value. It thus echoes the tragic fate of Lili Boulanger, condemned to an early death that left her sister inconsolable (herself having lost the love of her life with the death of Raoul Pugno). This theme of grief is also often present in the songs of the two composers.

From a technical point of view, the song line is based on a twelve-tone series that conveys a sense of losing one's bearings. This series is freely developed and carried by a distinctly Romantic aesthetic, paying tribute to the German lied. Thus, the piano, more than just an accompanist, expresses here the deep emotions of a grieving soul, while the voice often maintains a modesty of expression that doesn't prevent certain irrepressible outbursts.

The work is structured primarily around two main melodic-rhythmic patterns, that keep coming back, each time slightly changed. The one is an ascending trochee (a long note followed by a short one), which expresses a longing for peace in the afterlife. The other is a triplet that first goes down then up, sometimes showing sadness and pain, other times a sense of hope through mourning. The piece moves through three parts, gradually rising from low to high notes, leading to a final feeling of calmness—almost without emotion—as if drifting in a dreamlike space between two worlds

Duration: 3'00

Commissioned by the CNLB for the 13th edition of the Nadia and Lili Boulanger International Voice and Piano Competition. 
First performance on 25 October 2025 as part of the semi-final (Salle Cortot, Paris).